Allan Boesak and Farid Esack | 10 November 2010

Photo Israel’s apartheid wall from above.

In the opening lines of an open letter to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, leader of the South Africa’s Orthodox Jews, makes a plea that: “Without truth there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace.” If ever there was a case of a single swallow not heralding summer, alas, this is it. The rest of his article bears little relationship to the truth:

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Thursday 11/11/2010, Ma’an news

Photo: Christian Als. A young man looks for his mother’s grave in a cemetery in Beit Lehia that was destroyed by tanks in January 2009. Israel’s three-week-long attack has given rise to charges of war crimes on both sides.

Gaza City – Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip.

Injured Palestinians were stranded at the site of the blast in the Absan village east of Khan Younis, witnesses said.

Warplanes targeted two houses with four air strikes. The homes are owned by Naji Abu Hashem and the Al-Qara family, locals said.

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Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements Nov. 10th 2010

Photo Oren Ziv ActiveStils Palestinians, international and Israeli activists attended a night demonstration in Bil’in protesting ongoing recently nightly invasions to the village by the Israeli army.

The Israeli Army raids Bil’in the fourth time in three days Today, the 10 November a raid happened again in the village of Bi’lin. The Army entered at around 8 pm for the second time that day. In the morning, at around 3.00 am, they had already entered the village with five jeeps and searched Ashraf al-Khatibs home.The soldiers broke down the door of the neighbor’s house, and went in. However, they were not able to find who they were looking for in neither of the houses. When people from the village arrived, the 20 soldiers pointed their guns directly in the face of the people, and acted very aggressively. They also broke the door from al-Khatib’s house when they entered.

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by Rebecca Manski Mondoweiss on November 9, 2010

Photo Oren Ziv / Activestills Demolition of Al-‘Araqib village, Palestine.

Picking up a passenger by the hot, treeless roadside, Bedouin advocate ‘Ali Abu Subayh wheels his Fiat around onto a path, spitting rocks and coating the windows with dust, headed toward an “unrecognized village” in southern Israel. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the Israeli government displaced the Bedouin of the Negev desert into a sliver of land less than 2 percent the size of their former range. The government built seven townships for the Bedouin, and simultaneously declared all existing Negev Bedouin villages to be illegal. Today, Abu Subayh and 80,000 other Bedouin citizens of Israel born in one of these 45 “unrecognized” villages are threatened with further displacement. More than once, Abu Subayh, a field worker with the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, has himself returned home to find a piece of paper flapping on the post at the entrance to the goat pen—a demolition order.

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Montreal event with Israeli activist Noam Lekach via Anarchists Against the Wall

Friday November 19th 2010
18h00 Concordia University
Hall Building Room 937
1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West
Montreal, Quebec

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The Link Newspaper by Justin Giovannetti — November 2, 2010

Photo Palestinians line-up at Israeli military check point in occupied Palestine.

Ramallah, Palestine — “No pictures,” yelled the Palestinian driver as he guided his bus through precariously thick traffic towards the Qalandia Checkpoint.

While the driver admitted that the Israeli Defense Force probably wouldn’t shoot at a foreigner taking pictures, the use of deadly force is authorized at Qalandia. Israel’s 600 other checkpoints scattered across the West Bank operate in a similar manner. Palestinians are reminded of that fact regularly.

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by Isabelle Saint-Mézard Le Monde diplomatique

Photo Kashmir youth battles against Indian military forces.

India and Israel were born (in 1947 and 1948) through long and violent partition processes, from the ruins of the British empire. Both were caught up in inextricable armed conflicts. Yet this did not make for any particular affinity between the countries: rather the reverse.

From the 1920s onwards, the leaders of India’s nationalist movement sided with the Palestinian Arabs against British imperialism, opposing the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state. India voted against the partition of Palestine at the UN General Assembly of 1947, and only recognised Israel in 1950. Until the 1980s it formed a bloc with the Arab countries at the UN and within the Non-aligned Movement, in defence of the Palestinian people’s right to a sovereign state.

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PACBI November 2010 response to Nobel laureates’ attack on Israel academic boycott

Photo Israeli apartheid wall cutting through occupied Palestinian West Bank lands.

Once again, the specter of the suppression of academic freedom has been invoked in what is now becoming an organized campaign to counter the growing global movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel, and the academic and cultural boycott in particular. This time, a number of American, European, and Israeli Nobel laureates have been enlisted in the campaign, in the hope that their plea to defend “academic freedom” will stem the tide of this ever-expanding movement.

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Independent Jewish Voices Media Advisory Nov. 5, 2010

Photo Cracks in the the Conservative wall.

Independent Jewish Voices will hold press conference on Monday in Ottawa, releasing a video to the media and Members of Parliament which challenges the Harper government’s mounting attacks on free speech.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and the Harper government are sponsoring an international conference in Ottawa on November 8 and 9 of the ‘Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism’ (ICCA), following hearings earlier this year of the ICCA’s local counterpart – the ‘Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism’ (CPCCA).

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EPACBI statement launch Paris 26 September 2010

Photo Israeli apartheid wall cutting through Palestine.

This declaration announces the establishment of a common European platform for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The national, regional and local organisations and movements adhering to this platform:

* Accept and promote the boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions and divestment from companies that contribute to Israel’s grave violations of international law and human rights;

* Support the call of Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and accept the guidelines on its implementation issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) through the Palestine Boycott National Committee (BNC).

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